Variations in use of meta tag descriptions by Web pages in different languages

摘要

Sets of top-ranking pages in 20 languages returned by the Google search engine were downloaded and analyzed for presence of meta tag descriptions and lengths of descriptions. Results showed significant differences in proportion of pages with descriptions and in lengths of descriptions depending on language; specifically, pages in major Western European languages showed higher proportions with descriptions, while pages in Chinese showed the lowest proportions. Descriptions were mostly in the languages of the pages, though English descriptions were provided on some non-English pages. With few exceptions, coding schemes adopted for diacritics and non-Roman characters were standard.